


Our Eyes are Mirror Images

by lordue61116



Series: Such Great Heights [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Drama, Romance, War, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 11:58:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12276018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordue61116/pseuds/lordue61116
Summary: The Dragon Queen and the King in the North both need something from the other. When they meet, they discover they are more alike than they could have ever predicted.





	Our Eyes are Mirror Images

**Author's Note:**

> A deeper exploration based on recurring themes, motifs, and imagery of the series/novels, with a focus on highlighting the parallel journeys of our favorite characters from GoT and ASoIaF (specifically Season 7).

_Her_

 

Missandei whispered his arrival in her ear before she heard the thumping of his kingly footsteps echo down the damp stone corridor. When he entered, head high but black eyes downcast, followed closely behind by a grizzled, graying man she could only assume was his Northern version of a Hand, she felt it almost immediately. In spite of the Red Priestess’ feverish prophesying, in spite of her own Hand’s sincere assurances of his regard for the fabled and bone-deep honor of the half-Stark Lord Commander, Daenerys Targaryen felt a burst of dragon’s breath in her gut the moment he stood at military attention before her. His impertinence had woken the blood of Old Valyria, coursing beneath her hot pale skin.

                _I’ll enjoy watching this one’s knees give out from under him._

                And then she found herself apologizing to this upstart king, asking him not to judge her based on the raving lunacy of a man she never knew, meaning every word of it.

_Him_

               The closer she came to him, the more furious she became and the more ardently she bore him down with her own overwhelming belief in herself, Jon Snow understood that he had been very, very wrong.

                He’d locked eyes with the Night King, drifting away on the Shivering Sea with his life. He’d watched the dead rise as though death was nothing more than a minor inconvenience to be suffered. He’d watched giants break the gates of Castle Black. But he hadn’t witnessed _true_ magic in the world until he’d seen the Dragon Queen spit fire.

                She wanted more allegiance than he could give her. His people chose him to lead them through the Long Night and he couldn’t compromise their faith in him. There was one True War. There was no time to even consider another. As Daenerys Stormborn dismissed him and Ser Davos both into the care of her fearsome Dothraki bloodriders, with little more than the flick of her delicate wrist, even he – Stark bastard and legendarily noble to a fault – thought for an instant that he might have chosen the wrong fight.

 

_Her_

                Dragonglass.

                She should have known the moment Tyrion Lannister spoke in Lord Snow’s favor that her Hand would never let the King in the North sail away from Dragonstone empty-handed. Obsidian. Mountains and tunnels of it beneath her feet. What it was, she’d be hard-pressed to say. No one could doubt her instincts to rule, to conquer – she’d made sure to prove that, over and again, to any who had dared question it – but running from spies and birds all across Essos had left her woefully ignorant of the written lore of her homeland.

                But she liked the way the words felt, dancing around her tongue as she whispered them to herself, alone in her chambers. _Dragonglassssss. Obbsidiann._ Looking out across the darkness of the ocean, imagining she could see the outlines of the Red Keep just on the horizon, she decided that, whatever it was, she hoped that Dragonglass was at least the same oil-slick color of Drogon’s intelligent eyes.

                When he found her, alone, staring out over the crest of a cliff and facing the full-force ocean wind, she saw that same obsidian in Jon Snow’s eyes. That keen intelligence as she relented to his meager request. That brief moment when he thought he might have found one powerful ally in all the Seven Kingdoms who might believe the unbelievable, the thing he risked his rebel neck for. She saw her dragons in him, and it sent her stomach plummeting.

                Turning from him, she said the only thing she could.

 “Better get to work, Jon Snow,” because how could she have told him the thing turning itself over and over in her mind?

                _Have I found you? Finally? Is the sun setting in the West?_

_Him_

                Standing at the gaping mouth of a cave formed and arched from the North’s only hope for survival, the King in the North missed his sister more than he ever had, more even than when she followed their Lord father’s retinue south to King’s Landing and their doom. Sansa was the politician, much the Northmen’s loss for not realizing it sooner. If anyone should be negotiating terms of allegiance with the Last Targaryen, it should have been her.

                From where he stood, leaning against the lip of a mountain, he watched what the Queen’s advisor had assured himself and Ser Davos to be the entire Khalasar of the Great Grass Sea, encamped on the bank of an ocean their people had never crossed. Not ever, not once, in the entire history of their existence. And yet here they were, circled around camp fires and sparring in the failing sunlight. For vast stretches of time, the Dothraki had been led by fearsome, ruthless Khals – warriors who laughed in the face of death and rode into combat screaming – but they had not crossed the Ocean until they had chosen Daenerys as their Queen.

                Jon Snow found himself wondering if Sansa wouldn’t have been able to find some polite and high-born way to convince Daenerys to allow them to co-exist as allied nations. In fact, he’s certain she would have done it. Because he’s no good at the game and his sister seemed to have survived every rule-change that had ever been thrown at her. From where he stood, it looked like Daenerys Targaryen, with her three dragons untethered to the earth, her freed army of slaves, and her Dothraki riding the beach, was able to make the impossible happen.

                When he remembered why he was overseeing the excavation of Dragonglass, he knew he could use just an ounce of her magic.

 

_Her_

 

                When she’d emerged from her husband’s funeral pyre – licked by flame but unharmed – she felt victorious. Unsurprised. In her travels with the khalasar, sold, unable to communicate with her buyers, and continually bullied by the only family she’d ever known, she had taken comfort in watching her eggs. She knew when she felt their heat in her hands that they were living, breathing things.

                When Jon Snow gently pressed his callused hands against her waist and pushed her onward into the darkness of his Dragonglass cave, she couldn’t help but remember the knowing smirk Missandei had given her when they found him, torch in hand, calling for His Grace to follow him. This King was afraid to touch her. But when he raised that flickering torch and revealed to her his discovery – ancient carvings and symbols etched into obsidian long before either of them had ever drawn breath – she was glad for his closeness. Inflated in her chest was a feeling she’d assumed she was too old and battle-worn to ever get to feel.

                Child-like wonder.

                It was that feeling that caused her to give the man a promise. _I will fight for you, if you’ll fight for me_. She felt like a fool when he refused. All she could tell him to counter his obstinate refusal was something more honest than anything she should have said to someone technically in revolt against her.

_Do not be bound by pride._

_Him_

                Tyrion Lannister had been wrong. The man was the smartest man Jon had ever met, aside from his own Hand, and yet – had she asked – he might have told Daenerys Targaryen that a mind for politics and a mind for battle were not one and the same. The look of disappointed fury that overtook her as she received the news that her carefully cultivated allies had been decimated by Euron Greyjoy and the False Queen in the South made him feel genuine sympathy for her.

                But when she started angrily swearing fire and blood on the ancient stones of the Red Keep, it was Jon who felt the pangs of disappointment. This silver woman was the ally his people needed, and for their sake he needed her to be different. He needed her to be smart and not righteous, patient instead of rash, the way so many conquerors tend to be.

                As for the heat he could feel in his face every time he caught her regal posture slip into something more natural and less poised? He needed her to be different for that heat, too.

                Still, he didn’t expect her to forsake the advice of her trusted advisors and round on him. He’d been keeping his head down and wondering how he and Davos might escape this uncomfortable Small Council meeting, and then there she was.

                “What would you have me do?”

                Jon Snow knew that, in many ways, he was a stupid man. With her blue-violet eyes beseeching his, he chose, stupidly, to give her his honest answer.

                _Be different. Be more than fire and blood._

No one was more surprised than he was when she heeded his advice over all the others’. No one was more relieved. The heat was right.

 

 

_Her_

                The life of a conqueror was a lonely one. The life of a dragon more so. Her children were her only comfort and yet, she knew they acted just as much as a barrier between herself and other people as they acted the roles of surrogate children.

                As Dragonstone came into view, her legs straddling Drogon’s back and her blood still simmering from the smoke of battle, she saw a solitary figure waiting for her on the moors. He wasn’t a tall man but he looked large, even from a distance.   _Perhaps all those furs are meant to deceive the eye._ A small part of her realized that he was waiting there, for her safe return.

The closer Drogon got to him, and the longer Snow didn’t move, the more apprehensive she became. Her thoughts raced backward in time to the rattle of small blackened bones, and she began to desperately wish the King in the North would move further _north_ and somewhere closer to safety. The dragon beneath her touched ground and his taloned feet moved at a nearly-prancing pace in order to come to a stop. Still, Lord Snow did not move.

Daenerys Targaryen did not scare easily, but at that moment her fiery heart was in her throat. The fear she felt in battle, the Kingslayer racing toward her – spear aimed to kill – was nothing compared to the fear she felt now. As Drogon slowed and approached Jon Snow, with his head lowered in what Daenerys could have sworn was _submission_ , the last thing she ever thought she’d have the privilege of witnessing transpired before she could remember to breathe again.

The King in the North was not afraid of her largest, most imposing child, and Drogon was not immolating Lord Snow where he stood. In fact, watching the solemn Northman remove his leather glove and press his cold flesh to the scaly hide of Drogon’s snout, she was suddenly reminded of the fact that Jon Snow had a ferocious, magical child of his own, back in the snow drifts of Winterfell. And he seemed to be no less afraid of her dragon than he would have been a direwolf.

Not one person – save herself, their mother - on either side of the Narrow Sea had ever approached her children with anything less than abject fear and respect. Beneath her, she swore she felt Drogon _purring_ , like a stray cat bathing in the warm sand of a Meereenese alleyway.

When she caught her breath again, after what felt like hours, Jon Snow was looking up at her with his black, dragon-eyes, and she knew what it felt like to finally fall from a great height over which she’d been teetering for days.

 

_Him_

                The living didn’t stand much of a chance if a suicide mission was all that the greatest minds in Westeros could agree on. By the Old Gods and the New, humanity might not deserve saving if the woman sitting on the Iron Throne was so delusional and acidic that that her own brother doubted she’d come to the aid of her subjects unless someone around this carved-map table risked their lives to provide her _proof_ that a threat even existed. If Jon Snow was honest with himself, it made him want to leave Cersei Lannister to rot in the Red Keep.

                Tyrion Lannister’s plan was madness, but to let Jorah Mormont venture North of the Wall, into certain danger and possible death, would have been cruel. When the wizened and disgraced son of his Lord Commander appeared on Dragonstone earlier that morning, Jon had felt immediately like a fraud. More a fraud than he’d felt announcing himself as a king to Daenerys Targaryen. This man’s birthright – his ancestral Valyrian sword – was slung against _his_ hip, and by what right?

                When the silver queen embraced Jorah Mormont, in a way that was too familiar to be considering queenly, Jon Snow felt like the biggest fool in all the Seven Kingdoms. Perhaps the Seven Hells, as well. _You know nothing, Jon Snow_.

                Just the same, there was no part of him that could let this man - the son of a man he cared for and the clearly cared-for advisor of the woman who had come to terrify him in every possible way – die alone and join the Army of the Dead. There was only one man in the Small Council meeting with experience fighting the Night King. His sister and his brother were in Winterfell, risen from the dead. Without very much thought, he volunteered to lead Ser Jorah north. _The North will be safe in Sansa’s hands._

Across the span of a continent, he saw blue-violet irises narrow at him. Accusing ice. The boiled leather doublet he’d worn to softness seemed to constrict his chest like the blow of a hammer the moment she informed him that he hadn’t been given permission to leave.

                “Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but I don’t need your permission. I _am_ a King.” It was the only thing he could say to her. How could he say the thing turning itself over and over in his mind?

                _Let me do my duty before you become the death of it._

               

 

_Her_

 

                The whole world sounded like a scream. She’d ignored her Hand’s wild protestations as she had run down the hill and taken off in the air on the back of a dragon. It was, perhaps, the stupidest mistake she’d ever made. As far as she could see – an ambush of the dead and the blank, unforgiving void of ice. Drogon belched fire and set the world alight. Rhaegal and Viscerion churned the frozen air, circling above her.

                Surrounded and nearly overcome, every brave and foolhardy man who meant anything to Daenerys, First of her Name, fought tooth and nail against an unbeatable foe. Tattered skeletons mounted the island upon which they stood, like ants over a dinner left to rot. What was it? Six? Seven men? She circled once more.

                Standing in the middle, stock still and indifferent to the frenzy around him, Jon Snow dropped his sword and locked eyes with her.

                Drogon landed on an outcropping of rock. Without hesitation, she reached for him at the exact moment he reached for her. The tips of his frozen, gloved hands reached the tips of her warm, gloved hands and she knew she had done it. She had won. He was safe. Even in the Lands of Always Winter it was possible to feel the sun’s warmth shining down on you. The relief she felt was suffocating and the Queen of the Andals and the First Men knew, as soon as he climbed on to her child’s back behind her, she would cry.

                And then the horde gained on them. Her stupid hero King urged his company onward and upward, and he lashed out blindly, hacking away at the dead and yelling for his men to hurry. Not a one of them seemed fazed at riding a dragon. The things one can accomplish in the face of imminent death.

                From somewhere in the distance, she saw a bolt of lightning fly through the air. Above her, she heard a shriek that rent the gray horizon asunder. The world stopped moving. All looked up. Crimson blood burst from the chest of her youngest, smallest child. Her throat was clenched by an invisible fury. The ice around her broke and the water beneath it accepted the lifeless body of her Viscerion, slipping in like something boneless.

                Looking over her shoulder, she saw Jon Snow and she heard his voice in her head as clearly as if he’d whispered in her ear. _I’m so, so sorry._

Further back, she saw something inhuman. She saw a King and his Kingsguard and they were all made of ice. She saw that King rear his arm back with a frozen bolt of lightning. He aimed it at her.

                Jon Snow yelled, over and over again, for her to fly. When she took off, Rhaegal’s flying frantic and grief-stricken beside her, she saw the dead take down the King in the North. She saw him break through the ice and follow her child into the water. The wind in her face stung like a swarm of wasps and she wondered if a person could go on living when their heart and their soul were drowning.

                What had they done?

                What had _she_ done?

               

 

_Him_

He felt the whole great world rock and spin beneath him. He felt a fire warming him, furs draping over him. He felt feverish and cold. He felt eyes boring into him.

                He didn’t know where he was, but he knew – somehow – that His Queen, his Godsend, was watching over him.

                His eyelids weighed more than Dragonglass when he opened them. She was staring at the angry, mutinous wounds on his chest and her eyes were as red as her House sigil. Her dragon. The screaming and the blood. The amount of magic left in the world had lessened. Their weapons against the dead had lessened. And this confounding, frightening, beautiful woman had lost a child, and it had lessened her fire.

                “I’m so, so sorry. I wish I could take it back. I wish we’d never gone.” They were the words he’d been thinking as he watched her dragon fall from the sky. He needed to say them. When she said nothing, when she pressed her lips together to keep her emotions from spilling out in a torrent, he did the only thing he’d been wanting to do for weeks. His callused, feverish hand slipped into her pale delicate one and squeezed as much as he dared.

                That squeeze injected the fire back into her, and when she looked back up she was Daenerys of the Throne Room again, the one who’d made him cower like a direwolf with its tail between its legs. And she was vowing to fight his war with him, swearing vengeance on the Night King, and giving the living their best chance at survival.

                So he gave her the one thing she’d requested of him, Ser Davos’ voice in his head be damned. Because she had saved him, saved them all. She had given him what he’d asked and relinquished her desire for anything in return. Because the Last Targaryen believed in him and believed that the Iron Throne meant nothing if there wasn’t anyone left living to sit in it.

                Jon Snow had always been shit at diplomacy, but he knew when a battle could be won and when it couldn’t. Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons and Breaker of Chains, was the ruler to lead his people to victory. They needed her. He needed her. He’d known it since she reached out to him and the screaming dead went quiet around him. The North would come to see her for what she was.

                The break of day after a dark and terrifying night.

 

 

_Her_

                If there was anything she had learned over the years, it was how to make a royal entrance. The first part of their parlay in King’s Landing had been incredibly satisfying. Watching the Lion Queen’s hackles rise after landing Drogon on the crumbling steps of the dragonpit was like something out of her wildest dreams. Her slow walk to join the council’s circle. The silence louder than warfare. The black eyes watching her with pride.

                When the wight tumbled from its crate, leashed and reined by Sandor Clegane – the former Lions’ Hound – and ran mindlessly flailing its rotting limbs until it was a hair’s breadth away from Cersei Lannister’s face? That was the stuff of nightmares and children’s tales, and _still_ it felt like vindication. The way Cersei crawled up into herself, wrinkling the military garb she cloaked herself in, in a desperate imitation of her dead, ruthless father. It was more than she had dared to let herself hope for.

                Cersei Lannister chose that precise moment to live up to her reputation. There would be no truce and she would provide no armed forces to assist the North’s fight with the Night King unless Jon Snow swore to remain neutral once the truce ended. To Daenerys Targaryen, it seemed a reasonable thing to lie about. Considering Cersei Lannister was the perhaps the person she trusted _least_ in the Seven Kingdoms, she saw no reason for Jon Snow _not_ to lie and assuage the lioness.

                But heroes are a foolish breed and, with a dozen pairs of eyes on him, Jon Snow told the truth. He was not gloating and he was not spiteful, but he told Cersei Lannister that he could not agree to her terms, because he had already pledged his allegiance to Daenerys Targaryen. To her. For many reasons, the silver queen’s heart lurched in her chest.

                Snow’s honesty worked like poison on the parlay, and the Lannister forces – save her Hand – abandoned the dragonpit for the safety of the Red Keep. Tyrion was forced to go in after them. Daenerys couldn’t be sure that his sister wouldn’t have him killed on sight.

                The sense of failure hung heavy like a fog. No one left in the pit quite knew what to do other than to wait and see if Tyrion made it out with his head intact. She paced to and fro, in and out of the shade of the golden canopy above them, feeling more than a little responsible (although she felt she’d acted with more decorum and reserve than the False Queen deserved). Alone and standing beneath the hot Southern sun, clearly uncomfortable and roasting under layer upon layer of fur, Jon Snow kicked at a pile of dust and scattered dragons’ bones. A small smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. Considering the seriousness of the proceedings, the King in the North looked very much like a child who’d been caught telling a lie.

                It was for her he’d ruined everything and she couldn’t very well leave him to sulk alone. He believed in this fight more than anyone in Westeros. He’d made her see. When she approached him, telling him that she very much wished he _hadn’t_ scared off Cersei Lannister, that the loss of her child can’t be in vain, he looked hopeless. When she told him she respected his decision regardless, he brightened just a bit.

                When he defended his actions to everyone present, when he reminded them that lies and betrayal had gotten the Seven Kingdoms into the state it was currently in, when he said he wanted his word to mean something, he looked like a King.

                And when Cersei Lannister and her guards returned, pledging a ceasefire and fighting men, he looked like a triumphant one.

               

_Him_

                That darkened ship’s corridor was the longest walk of his life, and Ned Stark’s bastard had faced down many foes in perilous combat. The swaying of the waves rocked the ship gently, and the dozens of candles flickering from indeterminate corners of the hall caused shadows to dance like demons in the night. Jon Snow felt like they were laughing at him.

                Before leaving his chambers, at the far opposite end of his destination, he’d tried, in equal measure, to urge himself onward or talk himself out of it. _You stupid, stupid man. Some King you are._ He’d stood in the dark, his sword useless at the foot of his bed, with his head against the rough grains of the wall and his brow furrowed in self-doubt. Breathing forceful breaths in and out of puffed cheeks.

                He’d nearly fallen on his face when he finally threw himself out the door and into the corridor.

                He’d only walked a few paces before he turned on his heal and retreated. A few paces back again before righting himself.

                Each step seemed to take longer than the last, land louder than the last. Shadow demons playing games across the planes and angles of his face, obscuring his destination in mystery. When he finally got to the end of his long, long walk, he stared at the intricately carved three-headed-dragon on the door. Standing there, sweating and cold all at once, he stared at that trio of dragon heads for nearly ten minutes before raising his wrist and knocking three short and nervous raps on her door.

                The door flew open like the swift flap of a dragon’s wing taking flight. With a powerful gale.

                His Queen stood before him with her face set in a determined expression that told Jon Snow she had more or less been expecting his knock. Waiting for it. She didn’t tell him to enter but he did and she didn’t stop him. She didn’t say a word.

                Neither of them did. Not when he stepped into her chambers and close enough to smell her. Not when he closed the door behind them. For an eternity they stood facing each other, Daenerys Targaryen’s hand lingering on the closed door, Jon Snow’s chest almost visibly heaving. The King in the North and the former Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch had conquered death, and yet he might as well have been a green boy. She was so awesome and frightening and lovely. So stubborn and honorable.                

                A contest of wills. Who would break the tension, lean in first? Lord Snow may have bent the knee but this was a contest he won because he had to. Somehow he knew that she needed him to be the one to kiss her, that she would have turned him down if he hesitated.

                It seemed like ages since he’d kissed a woman. His beautiful warrior woman, a Wildling kissed by fire. But when he kissed _this_ woman, this silver sliver of magic and Valyrian steel, it felt just like it had when he’d woken up, naked as his name day, on that table in the Lord Commander’s chamber at Castle Black.

It felt like he’d been woken up by the shocking and sudden kiss of life.

 

_Her_

Memory is a living, breathing thing, the same as dragons, the same as Kings and Queens. The way a journey ends can often color the way we remember that journey’s beginning. When her husband died, Daenerys Targaryen had loved him. She mourned his loss the way any wife would mourn the death of a husband, and as Khaleesi she gave him a funeral befitting any great Khal.

                Because of the great love that grew between them on their long trek to Vaes Dothrak, she was often able to blur the part of her memory that included her wedding night. He was her Sun and Stars when he left this world, but she still remembered what it felt like to be taken against her will. As morning broke the day after her wedding, Daenerys Stormborn vowed to never let a man take her again. He’d have to kill her first.

                Dorea taught her how to love her Khal. Outside the walls of Yunkai, when she met Daario Naharis, she made sure he knew she was a Queen. That _her_ command was all that mattered. Daario may have been a man for whom women were among the things he did best, but he was her loyal plaything. She made sure of that.

                So when the King in the North showed up at her bedroom door, it was because she let him be there. As he walked through the door, though, he looked as frightened as he did when she looked down on him North of the Wall, searching for him from the back of her dragon. Daenerys kept expecting him to say something, but he didn’t. She could see he was shaking, and she suddenly remembered the implication of his Night’s Watch vows.

                They were a King and Queen who had just negotiated a fragile alliance between their forces for the greater good of all the Seven Kingdoms, so she let _him_ be the one to kiss _her._

There were half a dozen reasons why the muddying of their alliance was inadvisable, and in her head she knew her Lord Hand could probably rattle off three times that amount, but they’d successfully brokered a truce with a Mad Queen and they were sailing toward Death and she wanted Jon Snow to kiss her with his dragon-eyes open.

No words were spoken but it was not silent in her chamber. It was cold on the deck of the ship but the fire roared in its hearth and they laughed, breaking the tension and fumbling with wolf fur and dragon brooches and boiled leather vests and breeches. The first time he kissed her it was gentle, like he thought she might shift into smoke and flame between his fingers, but now he kissed her like the King he truly was.

They were sweating into the cold winter night. Through the single window of her chambers, the sound of waves lulling the rest of the ship to sleep acted like war drums, urging them on into a battle of limbs and lips and sighs. The bed was piled high with Northern furs and skins. His shaking had subsided into muted, seismic trembling and Daenerys knew he wasn’t cold, so she led the charge. Ask any of her foes – she was ferocious in combat.

It was when their bodies became so entwined that there was no beginning or end to either of them that Jon Snow’s nervous tremors finally stilled. It was then that he took control, shifted her beneath him. It was then that he stopped, just for a moment. Jon Snow paused and his dragon-black eyes looked down into Daenerys Targaryen’s blue-violet eyes in a way that no man looked at her anymore. He looked at her not for what she could be or what she might have been, but for what she was, right then and there.

Still, they did not speak – not in words. They communicated in an eternity of blinks, in her hands rubbing his back and his hands cradling her face, both realizing they’d accomplished what each had set out to do, when a raven had flown North from Dragonstone and a ship had set out South from White Harbor to answer it. Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons and Breaker of Chains, had managed to bring Jon Snow to his knees. And the King in the North had all the magic he needed to win the War for the Dawn.


End file.
